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Why Hasn’t Video Calling Caught On?

Way back in the last century science fiction brought us the video call. It was on Star Trek (but oddly, not on the Communicator) and other popular TV shows and movies, but even as we’ve wired the earth with a giant high speed network, video calls just haven’t caught on.

True, Skype is used. So is FaceTime. So a dozens of other face-to-face video calling apps, options, and services, but most of the time, when we call someone up, we call the old fashioned way. Audio. On a phone. Worse, a huge chunk of younger humankind keeps in touch by typing and sharing photos. Whatever happened to the promise of video calling?

The technology, the network, and the necessary bandwidth are here already, but you’d be hard pressed to find a popular television show where the actors communicate with others using Skype or FaceTime. What’s the problem? A little investigating indicates that the problem is a multitude of problems.

Skype just announced a new version which brings in group video calls for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. Our devices– PCs, smartphones, tablets– and bandwidth are sufficiently powerful that multiple streams of audio and video can be cobbled together into a group video, perfect for business to business, family and friends.

One of the first issues to inhibit video calling is a mixture of bad hair day and makeup. Audio phone calls and text messages allow us to be our scruffy worst and still connect. Whether we use Skype or FaceTime or something else, it pays to be pretty or well primped if you want to do a video call with anyone, otherwise the topic of conversation may just be how bad you look at the moment.

Skype’s new app does multiple video calls the way you would expect it to be done; multiple video streams, camera control options, audio control options, and HD video quality (depending upon device, of course).

It doesn’t take much effort to find someone using their smartphone or tablet for calls or texts, but video calling is the rarity, despite a few billion phones with the capability.

When I connect to older relatives who have FaceTime installed on their iPads often what I see is their head from the mouth down instead of a full frame face. Why? They don’t want me to see what they see on their iPad’s screen because what they see of themselves doesn’t look good to them, yet it’s exactly what I would see if I were there, so what’s the difference?

This syndrome is akin to listening to an audio recording of your own voice. What we hear on the recording is not what we hear through our ears (though it’s exactly what everyone else hears when they listen to us) because we listen to ourselves through our ears and the rest of our head and the sound seems different. It’s not, but perception is reality, and people don’t like listening to their own voice.

Ipso facto, people don’t like looking at themselves when they do a video call and that creates something of a deterrent to making or accepting such calls.

Apple could fix this with avatars; digital versions of ourselves made more handsome, prettier, more striking, or sexy, or whatever it is that an avatar does to make someone’s online presence more acceptable. These digital avatars should look realistic but be fully customizable. As we talk, they talk. As we interact over a video call, the avatar does the same.

An app that creates human-like talking avatars would go a long way toward making video calls a promise fulfilled.

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Comments

AT&T introduced the Picturephone in 1964 and it was a flop for the same reasons video calling has failed to gain traction in the 21st century. In general people don’t like it. Great for enterprise video conferencing but the average Joe couldn’t care less.

Some people like FaceTime. My wife uses it to talk to her mom overseas a lot. Similarly, my sister and mom use it a lot. I would like to use it when presenting to groups of people. I want that visual feedback. We’ve discussed this but have only done limited tests.

For most cases audio is preferable to video. I can go on the speaker while I do other tasks. I can’t do that if I have to pay attention to a video.

This may be gender related. When I’m in a coffee shop talking to a male colleague we tend to be looking around the room. However, I often see women chatting face to face. That would be uncomfortable for me.

I use Facetime all the time. Apple has made video calling much easier.

The primary reason video calling has not caught on is that it is very inconvenient to use – no matter how easy it is to use.

First, the biggest problem is that you are forced to look at the other person all the time on a video call. This means you are trapped and cannot be doing something else that takes your attention off the video. Certainly you cannot be driving while on the video phone. You cannot multitask while on the video phone or you will look extremely rude.

Second, the problem of video calls is that you actually rarely exchange information through the video. Nearly all the information is exchanged by the audio. You are not doing Keynote presentations with every video call, for example. This means the effort you are forced to spend staring at the screen is totally wasted effort. This means that you might as well transmit a still image or picture with a video call – or better yet simply use audio and send a picture of you by mail – since it is hardly crucial to have video for the call.

When it is important to actually see the other person, when video data is actually exchanged, then it is useful to do Facetime. Otherwise, an audio call is much more efficient and convenient.

Obviously, with many people, a text message is even better than an audio call since it allows a one-sided conversation.

To me there’s limited value to making video calls. Why would anyone want to feel forced into watching the face of someone while talking? Does it change shape? Is something magical about to happen? Video calling is useful when you want to SHOW someone something while talking to them. Unfortunately, we’re mostly limited to the camera on our devices which isn’t always the best source for what we are trying to show. To make matters worse, the freedom and flexibility to show others things run into issues where content creators and network providers worry that people will use these networks to share content in ways that they would feel are unfair. There’s a potential to communicating utilizing sight as well as sound. However, it’s clumsy and the point of doing it shouldn’t be best served when wanting to show each other anonymous body parts.

I was stuck in Boston over the new year and I shared Boston’s fireworks with my roommate back in California via FaceTime. Of course, she’s not seeing me–I’m using the front camera.

So, yeah, it’s great for showing people stuff. “Check out the fireworks! Here’s the hotel room they stuck me in!” But for actually having a conversation, meh.

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